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Brad Ledford, who is set to appear on the next season of The Bachelorette featuring Taylor Frankie Paul, has a controversial past involving a serious legal dispute following a car accident that left a politician paralyzed.
The incident occurred in April 2014 when Ledford, now 29, reportedly crashed his vehicle into a concrete barrier, causing it to catch fire instantly, as reported by The U.S. Sun on Wednesday, February 25.
At the time of the accident, Madison Cawthorn, who would later serve as a U.S. representative for North Carolina, was a teenager sitting in the passenger seat.
The crash left Cawthorn partially paralyzed, confining him to a wheelchair.
The report from The U.S. Sun indicates that the two friends were returning from a spring break trip to Florida when Cawthorn accused Ledford of driving his 2007 BMW X3 negligently.
“He was my brother, my best friend,” Cawthorn said of Ledford during a 2017 speech given at Patrick Henry College, per Mother Jones. “He runs to safety deep in the woods and just leaves me in a burning car as the flames start to lick my legs and curl up and burn my left side.”
Ledford denied Cawthorn’s account, telling People in 2021 that he pulled his best friend out of the passenger-side window.
Cawthorn sued Ledford twice over the injuries he sustained from the accident.
The first suit, which ended in 2016 and included Ledford’s parents’ company as defendants, is sealed. However, two years later, Cawthorn sued Ledford again. The U.S. Sun reported that the case concluded in 2022 “with a notice for voluntary dismissal with prejudice, meaning Cawthorn cannot sue Ledford again.”
The Republican politician, who served in Congress from 2021 to 2023, is currently running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives again, this time in Florida.